


keep me around (i might spill my guts)

by tetsurx



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Study, Dialogue Light, F/M, Feelings Realization, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Recreational Drug Use, Sappy, Unrequited Love, like SUPER sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22876270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tetsurx/pseuds/tetsurx
Summary: Maybe his mother was right when she drunkenly said love wasn't real, not to people like them. Who would choose them, him, either way? Who would take a look at the unresolved childhood trauma and bleak future and say "Hey, i'm willing to love you for who you are!"?( Or in which Hyde falls in love. And again. And one last time. )
Relationships: Jackie Burkhart/Steven Hyde, Steven Hyde & Donna Pinciotti
Comments: 18
Kudos: 122





	keep me around (i might spill my guts)

Smoke and laughter make the air feel heavy and pungent. Hyde's eyes are red behind his shades, smile thin but content, feeling the looming certainty of getting old get replaced by the false sense of eternal youth. He doesn't think for once, words falling off his chapped lips without feeling the need to sound smarter, older, funnier, than he truly is. He talks, about stupid nonsensical things he's sure those four walls have heard a million times before, but doesn't care, carries on, too stupid, far gone, to feel self-conscious at his choice of words.

Someone laughs, at him or with him, he doesn't know, doesn't care, forgets about it in breath, because that laugh fills him with warmth. He drags his eyes to his left, following the beautiful, warm sound and stares. Forman is laughing as light blends with smoke behind him, creating a halo of fuzzy gold around him, making him ethereal, otherworldly, beautiful, and whatever other adjective he's too high to come up with.

Hyde feels something expand in his chest then, making it hard to breath and his knees weak. His mind buzzes with unthinkable thoughts, fuel for his burning chest and lungs. It makes his skin tingle, his fingertips suddenly gone, fills his mouth with cotton, leaves his tongue feeling like it's too big, too heavy for his mouth. His mind reboots when his jaw clicks, leaving his teeth hurting. He rubs his eyes, red and puffy, and looks away. 

He refuses to acknowledge what he just felt, what he discovered deep between him. He denies, rejects, any and all labels his mind tries to put on the feeling and he tells himself that maybe that stash was too strong for his 14 years old mind and body. 

* * *

It takes two years or so before Hyde accepts those feelings. He's almost 17 by then, a bit more cynical and with a stronger tolerance. He still doesn't like labels, (but who would in his dirty, stolen shoes?) and he never embraced it either; but he doesn't shy away from it anymore, opting to throw a snarky comment after staring for a bit too long, with a bit too many feelings. He finds himself in the perfect middle ground for his cynical self, after all being sarcastic and harsh in replacement of vulnerable and honest came natural to him.

It got easier with time, not to melt when their arms brushed as they walked, or to freeze when Forman looked at him while smiling, or to boil when he looked at Donna. It got easier, to replace those knee jerk responses with fabricated eye rolls and cunning comments. It got easier to identify it too, for it not to punch him in the gut when he felt it again. Knowing when to stop dating, when to run away, become a ghost to a selected few, comes in handy as people start to take an interest in his life-style and the prospect of "fixing" him. Whenever he feels even a fraction of what he felt that time in Forman's basement, he books it and tries not to think too much about his father.

Hyde tries to tell himself that it wasn't so bad, that it was a needed experience to understand himself better, to know what to expect from himself and what to do in case it happened again. But that only really applied in the prospect of new people, because in theory those flings and dates were only practice for the next big fall. He should have known though, should have taken a look at his life and choices and past, should have seen the misery he has been through and shouldn't have hoped for an easy way out. He should have been braver, less careless and young, and dug deeper the second he registered what those feelings were. But it was easier to let his future self deal with all the shit he was too much of a coward to unravel, always too afraid and tired for self reflection and insight.

So now, he sits at The Hub as another punch to the gut is about to be delivered with the name Donna Pinciotti written on the tin. Hyde should have seen it coming, truly, because he has known Donna wasn't like other girls from the first day. He closes his eyes in defeat when he realizes he still remembers when he felt it in his chest, back then. 

Donna was sitting in Forman's chest, making him eat dirt, actual dirt, as in from Mrs Forman's garden dirt, by the handful. She was laughing, they all were, (except for Forman, of course) when she caught a worm between her fingers. She didn't scream like he expected her to do, she didn't even blink, instead she looked at it in awe as mischief made her eyes shine and threw it directly to an unsuspecting, laughing, Kelso. As that worm flew, he remembers blaming the hot summer day for his rosy cheeks and clammy hands, and his laughter for his burning chest and breathlessness.

Ah, to be a 12 years old brat, too young to know what love is but old enough to buy firecrackers in shady corner stores. Those were the days. Now, Hyde has to deal with the realization that he fell for both his best friends, who look at each other like the other painted the stars in the sky. Maybe his mother was right when she drunkenly said love wasn't real, not to people like them. Who would choose them, him, either way? Who would take a look at the unresolved childhood trauma and bleak future and say "Hey, i'm willing to love you for who you are!"?

He's too realistic, some say pessimistic, to hope, long for a happy ending, aware of his flaws more than anyone else, engraved in his skin by his mother's slurred words, the silence at the dinner table. He knows not to expect anything from anyone ever, to take barely what's necessary to live but not bother anyone while doing it. He knows better than anyone that people like him, who live between empty bottles and dirty laundry, who's first smoke was stolen by too young hands, who's future lays in a dark alley behind a burger joint; people like him don't get happy ever after. So he makes amends with what he has, with what he can take, steal, and kisses Donna on a ski trip. Donna slaps him, but that's a better outcome than what he expected, so he grabs the memory and shamelessly, selfishly, locks it behind his heart.

* * *

( When they're drunk and high and far gone, and Forman's getting some cake for Fez, Donna looks at him, and he knows, even in his inebriated state, what she was going to say.

"Why did you do that, Hyde? Why would you… do that?" She asks him, slurred, almost whiny, and he reaches for his beer. He tips it back without breaking eye contact with Donna, and prays the beer washes down the mountain of words he wants to say, screaming, cry out then. Hyde looks away and blinks hard, his eyes swim in smoke, coming dangerously close to overflowing, but he swallows and forces everything down, down with the beer and the fuzziness of youth, of forbidden love and broken promises; he looks back at honey red eyes.

"I …had to know-" his jaw clicks, "I had to know why" he breathes out. Donna frowns, ready to ask for answers, but Forman gets back with cake for everyone, so he grabs a slice with an easy smile that doesn't see the outside of those four walls that often and wills himself not to spill his guts and heart on the circle.

Hyde catches Donna's eyes later, after he makes Forman laugh at something, and she should be gone if the empty cans of beer around her could be counted, but her eyes are lucid and the size of the moon watching every move he makes. He looks back at her, half lidded, and nods, slow, deliberated, knowing, defeated. And she gasp, a hand going to her mouth.

The second he sees pity dancing with the surprise and understanding in her eyes, he gets up and leaves without a word. 

Nobody comes for him. )

* * *

Hyde sits on the roof of a car on Veterans day and watches the stars dance in Jackie's eyes. Her hair flies with the wind and she shivers, so he gives her his jacket. She kept swallowing hard, like there was a rose stuck on her throat and the thorns tickled her tranche, so he buys her an extra large soda.

She leans in, so he kisses her. 

She says "I didn't feel anything," hopeful, excited, like she finally took that rose out and threw it on the trash can, stopping the itch.

So he says "No," when she asks him what he felt, even as he touches his lips, and his knees go weak, and his chest burns and expands and contracts.

* * *

Practice makes perfect, or that's what his 4th grade art teacher told him when he threw a fit because his farm model was the ugliest of the class. He didn't care back then, didn't have the brain power to understand or reflect or communicate that his model was so shitty because Edna kept using the matches to light her cigarettes (and blunts and spoons). But now, now he sees truth in that statement, can comprehend that it doesn't only apply to arts and crafts but life in general, day to day skills. He knows now life is a constant trial and error, knows it takes time to polish a skill, be it roll a joint or cope with unwanted, unrequited feelings. It takes time, of course, it takes time and effort and slight shifts in personality, but once you have a formula that works, a system, you end up doing it so flawlessly people, including you, forget a time before you had that skill. 

But Jackie takes Kelso back not for the first time, and the skill, practice, self-control he accumulated in the last months, years, goes down the drain faster than Edna's spilled rum. It shouldn't surprise him, neither that she forgave the lying bastard nor that he lost it beyond repair. It was written in the stars on Veteran's day, when she gave up so easily on what could have been, when he let her get away without a fight. He should have seen it coming, accepted it before it happened, trained his face muscles not to pull into a frown, a scrowl, when the news came. But he got cocky, trusted too much his polished instincts, got too comfortable under his own fake skin. He forgot the tiny little cracks each lie, each scoff, each sarcastic comment, made in his defense. And with a final blow, a cheer from Jackie, filled with excitement, and a brag from Kelso, filled with smugness, his second skins finally breaks off.

He sits on his chair, guts exposed, and watches Jackie look up at Kelso. She's tiny beside him, but so much more than what she seems. She's bigger than her bones, bigger than the house she lives in, bigger than her ego and dreams. But her hands are small and her skin and heart are porcelain, ready to be dropped and shattered over and over by grabby, selfish hands. It makes his blood boil, the fact that she could walk among stars, if only she didn't put her self-worth on those slippery hands, her father's, her mother's, her preppy squad’s, Kelso's.

She deserves golden roses and a starry night in a jar, she deserves the best and she knows it, but she convinced herself the best she was going to get was stolen teddy bears and the back of a van, and God wasn't that just tragic? She deserves someone who treats her right, someone she can to talk to, really talk to, because he doesn't buy for a second that all Jackie Burkhart's soul is purely made of pink glitter and unicorn pillows. She deserves to be listened to, taken care of, supported, but also challenged, pushed to her better self. She deserves better, even if that better isn't him (and he isn’t, he truly isn't; her voice give him migraines, he can’t afford regular flowers and nobody taught him how to catch stars with his hands; he was contrary by nature and could bring the worst out of Mrs Forman on a good day).

Jackie deserves better than him, and himself, so Hyde looks away, clicking his tongue and swallows poison. He catches Forman looking at the guts on the floor, shaped like sneers and rolling eyes, and he frowns, confused, intrigued. Hyde meets his eyes, tired and bored of unsaid tangible feelings, and blinks slowly, begging Forman would assume he was simply "sicken by the capitalist concept of love brands try so hard to push down our throats, man" and move on for the night. But maybe the floor was a shade too dark of red, maybe the smell of copper was too strong, maybe his hands were gripping his biceps too tightly to ignore, so Forman raises an eyebrow in question, unrelenting. Hyde exhales heavily through his nose, shakes his head and looks away. "Not the time" his moves read, and he's glad Forman understands and doesn't fight it, simply nodding, looking away and injecting himself back on Donna and Jackie's conversation.

Hyde misses the small frown on Jackie's lips and her darting, boiling hot eyes on him, or maybe he doesn't. But she said "Nothing" as his world trembled beneath the pearl white Lincoln as if she herself wasn't the reason why the lava running through his veins began pouring out. So he misses it, misses her following, searching eyes, misses the hushed comments, questions of concern. He misses the lingering touches and small conversations, and watches her for afar as she sits on Kelso's lap, holds his hands, kisses his check.

* * *

When Kelso leaves, he's too numb grieving the loss of another red head to pay attention to her watering eyes and trembling hands. He's busy losing himself on cheap booze and good weed, because Donna left for California.

Donna left and his chest collapsed on itself, and now he's hollow and cold like a shattered porcelain doll. And he hates himself for letting it affect him like it does, hates the feeling of entitlement to an explanation, an apology that keeps growing in his chest, hates the longing in his fingertips, hates his wandering, distracted eyes that keep trying to find her in a one man circle. 

Hyde hates it, hates himself, hates the choked sobs Forman lets out when he thinks Hyde's napping, hates the missing spark from Fez's eyes. Hates Mrs Forman's coping baked cookies filling the pantry, hates the sneers Red's throws to the phone whenever it rings. Hates the wall in the basement that dented below his fist.

He's busy wallowing in self pity and hatred to noicte Jackie slowly crumbling. He wishes he paid more attention, wishes she would have been loud with her sorrow like she's with her joy. But she wasn't, so now there they were. 

At his door, Jackie stands tall, head held up high, even as she trembles and shakes and overflows. Hyde had always had a soft spot for her, even back when her voice felt like nails on chalkboard and her gaze was colder than contraband beer, and it seemed that she always came to him, even back when his comments were sharper than a knife and he didn't look at her when she talked to him. So it isn't a surprise, neither that she's there as she breaks, nor that he lets her into his room without questioning.

She sits on his bed, unprompted, like she owns the place, and Hyde's hand twitches when she grabs his pillow, hugging it for comfort. He says nothing as he sits beside her, too tired to pretend he doesn't crave human contact, and looks at the ceiling, waiting for the waterfall of words or tears, whatever comes first. Jackie sighs and slightly leans towards him, as if she was unconsciously reaching for a heat source.

"They suck." she says, simple and heavy. If it were any other time, he might have chuckled, might have thrown more wood to the fire, but his bones still ache and his fingers twitch for a joint or pale freckled skin, or soft black curls, he doesn't know, so he hums lowly in response and hopes his guts stay hidden in the dented wall.

He knows when her eyes land on his face because his skin burns, and he has to resist the urge to maniacally scratch the patch of skin, but he keeps his eyes on the ceiling. She tries to muffle her gasp, he knows she does, but her whole existence is loud and proud like a pride flag, so he braces himself, for mockery at his vulnerability, or annoyance at his self-centeredness, or pity at his stupidity, but nothing comes. He frowns at the silence, and finally gives in and looks at her. She's frowning, and he finds not mockery, annoyance or pity but cold rage in her mismatched eyes. Her breathing is shallow, quick, and she's back to shaking, but when their eyes meet, she swallows down a rose and steadily breathes out it's petals. He wants to punch himself for adding to her distress, and he tries to find the right words to console her, destress her, but she clears her throat and moves closer, and his jaw clicks as his mind turns to mush.

"Got a stash?" she asks, and his eyebrows shot up. A slow half smirk grows in his face, the first of the summer, and he watches as her expression mirrors his.

They don't talk again until Hyde's stash is down to half, and Jackie's glued to his right side, head on his chest as he caress her soft but unsurprisingly muscular arms (she is a cheerleader, after all). They laugh at the moss on the ceiling as if it were a SNL rerun and their hands intertwine beneath the pillow Jackie's still somehow holding on to. They talk about nothing but everything, and their tongues weigh a hundred kilograms with each word left unsaid. Jackie tries to look up at his face from his chest without moving, and Hyde keeps drawing the Mona Lisa on her exposed skin and giving up and starting over again and again.

The afternoon stretches but the hours don't pass and Jackie holds his hand up to her face. She plays iddlely with his fingers, and quietly sings "I'm Not In Love" by 10cc off key, and his chest burns and freezes and hollows and fills to the brim. 

He looks at the top of her head, then their touching hands. Jackie's are small, soft, her nails are painted lavender and she has a thin golden ring on her pointer finger. Hyde's are big, calloused, there's a scar in the middle of it thanks to the times it was an ashtray to his parents and the eyeball ring on his pinky has darkened the skin around it once again. His cotton filled mind tells him they fit perfectly together, and he swallows when he can't find it in him to deny it. 

He tells himself he will fight it once he can count how many buttons his shirt has.

* * *

His shirt didn't have any buttons, but the ceiling has only one moss stain, not ten like they thought, and Hyde tries to deny that Jackie and him could never fit well together, but they kiss while watching The Price is Right. They kiss, meet in the middle, and her lips are softer than clouds, her tongue is sweet like honey, and Hyde loses himself in the sensation. Her hands go to his neck, his to the side of her face, soft skin below calloused fingers, thin fingers get lost on curls. Inapposite tenderness holds him hostage as he walks on the summer sky, and he should have been scared of the tranquility settling in his chest but she’s sweet like nectar and Hyde had always had a sweet tooth.

They part ways but keep breathing the same air, and Hyde has to peel his eyes away from her cherry lips and drag them to her closed eyes. Jackie breathes out, the cold air against his lips makes him shudder involuntary, but their eyes met and Hyde can see as her words evaporate between them. She looks at his eyes and sees her drown, and he decides it isn’t so bad, that Donna left, that she took Kelso back, if only because they got there and he got to see her fall. His chest expands, and compresses, and the dead butterflies in the pit of his stomach decide to revive all at once and come out of his mouth with his next exhale. The weightless feeling in his chest, not hollow for once, nor filled to the brim, makes his skin tingle. She keeps looking at him, as if she was seeing him for the first time, and maybe she was, or maybe she finally found what she didn’t find that night on top of a pearly white Lincoln. 

“You taste like puddin pops” she whispers, intimate and breathless and brainless, and he can’t help but laugh as her cheeks turn into peaches. 

It’s absurd, he realizes, everything about them and her and him is completely absurd, but he doesn’t even think of running for once. His skin aches for hers, his fingers already caressing her redding checks, his heart is on his sleeve but he doesn’t run, doesn’t think. And when she pouts, he kisses her silly on that rotten orange couch with the freedom of a timeless fool. She kisses back, that’s the best part, she kisses back with the intensity of the summer sun, and the tenderness of the midnight breeze. She loses herself in him as much as he loses himself in her; but they meet in the middle and hold on to it, the feeling of it all, and don’t dare to let go, to open their eyes and let their stare wonder outside of their personal rose scented bubble. 

Wandering hands take their time to search, find, explore, every inch of skin they’re allowed to caress. It’s warm and slow, not rushed for once, filled with whispered praise and unbreakable promises. Jackie is soft beneath him, her peachy cheeks strain with her smile and Hyde doesn’t hide the adoration building in his chest, instead opting to kissing both peaches taking residence in his cheeks, and making a trail of small, soft, wet kisses down her neck. Her hands are surprisingly cold as she paints the starry night in his back, and he shudders, says her name like a prayer, and blows a raspberry in her right clavicle. She laughs, and angels sing from above, and Hyde realizes he wouldn’t want to be anywhere in the world besides right there, shameless intertwined with her in that ratty old couch. He forgets about his own rules, throws out the window the system he perfected to avoid that exact situation, and he spills his guts in the form of a kiss, hoping she can understand, can read between the lines, can taste what he’s too afraid to say out loud for now from his lips. And when she kisses him back, sending a response in her tongue back, his bones hollow out and his chest is light and he’s weighless for once. He smiles between kisses, content, joyous, peaceful, and she smiles back, giddy, lively, bright.

It is absurd, that she calls him puddin pop and he adores it, that he calls her doll and doesn’t mean hollow and fake, that she sits on his lap even when there’s a free seat, that he listens to her talk for hours and finds it soothing. Everything about them is absurd, senseless, ridiculous, but Hyde finds he doesn't mind one bit. As long as Jackie is there by his side, to help him clean his, their, her guts up, that’s alright. They are alright.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so so so much to my best friend [soddingpotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soddingpotter) for beta-ing this fic and supporting while i wrote it. i love you moss <3
> 
> steven hyde took my heart and mind hostage and refuses to let em go. i ain't complaining tho.  
> expect more t7s fics soon!


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